Memphis conservatives sought to build and balance the Republican Party.

Black Republicans, today and throughout U.S. history, have joined the struggle for the soul of the party, and its current leadership might learn a few lessons from George Washington Lee and the American South in the early 1960s.

This was a time when Republican conservatives began successfully wooing southern Democrats, who were increasingly discontented with federal Democratic involvement in the civil rights movement. Lee, a political operative and activist from Memphis, embodied the struggle of black Republicans to maintain their foothold in a party that increasingly moved away from their best interests.

Much like Michael Steele and others black moderates who struggle to strike a racial balance in the GOP today, Lee fought to maintain an increasingly tenuous balance between racial moderates and conservatives.

Lee, a lieutenant in World War I, immersed himself in the political life of black Memphis, and by the 1920s, was a stalwart in black Republican circles, having worked aggressively with the Lincoln League, an organization of black Republicans, to build the party.

In the early 1950s, as the democratic political machine led by Memphis' Edward "Boss" Crump began its decline, Lee emerged as a Republican who exerted considerable influence across the entire state, and could sway the balance of power in statewide elections, particularly with his influence on the substantial African-American vote in Memphis.

During the 1952 Republican National Convention, Lee's eloquence moved Dwight Eisenhower to seek him out at the convention to solicit his support. Lee worked tirelessly for Eisenhower, providing a crucial bloc of votes. Lee's marshaling of black voters provided Eisenhower with a razor-thin victory in the state, and he helped spearhead re-election support for Eisenhower again four years later. By 1956, he was one of the most influential political operatives in Tennessee.

Lee relentlessly fought the conservative wing of the party, which had little use for black Republicans, regardless of their commitment to the GOP. He felt strongly that for much of the 20th century, the Republican Party placed itself on the right side of the "race question" in the U.S, and it needed to consolidate the black vote with bold, affirmative leadership in civil rights.

Lee advocated for the creation of a "civil rights section" within the Republican National Committee headquarters, and the appointment of a black vice-chairman of the RNC. Crucially, Lee recommended the rejection of the emerging coalition between Republicans and Southern Democrats. "The great task of our Party," he wrote, "is to find more effective ways and means of solving the problems that…trouble our domestic scene."

Lee continued to confront the emerging coalition between his party and Southern conservatives, but it was a losing battle. Increasingly, Republicans saw a future for their party that did not include African Americans, who were steadily migrating to the Democratic Party.

Buoyed and shielded by the emergence of Barry Goldwater's vigorous advocacy of state's rights conservatism, Southern Republicans accelerated a campaign to grow the party and purge its moderate, Negro-led faction.

In Memphis, the Republican Association, an all-white, conservative faction of the party, steadily grew in strength and influence. In 1962, Lee lost his seat on the Shelby County Republican Party Executive Committee, and a year later, the county's Republican apparatus engineered the removal of the remaining elements of Lee's coalition by relocating registration venues to white, segregated locations.

A delegate to the every Republican National Convention since the 1920s, Lee lost his seat in the Shelby County contingent in 1964 in San Francisco. Although he fought to regain his credentials with help from moderate governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and William Scranton of Pennsylvania, Lee lost his battle, and Tennessee's delegation to the convention was all white for the first time in more than 50 years.

Lee remained adamant in his support of the party, and although he would remain an active member until his death in 1976, he always feared for the soul of the party, particularly as it grew more conservative.

A conservatism that failed to address the needs of minorities and other dispossessed groups would, in his view, put the party on course for decline. Two years after the 1964 convention, Lee wrote to Rockefeller, "We have strayed so far from the philosophy upon which the party was founded that our backs are to a political wall, and we will die there if the trend continues towards racism."

At first glance, subsequent Republican presidential victories would belie Lee's concern. However, the racial conservatism that lay at the heart of the party's growth in the South -- and, increasingly, outside of the South -- has come at a cost. With titanic changes in the nation's racial demographics, the party is faced with a stark choice – to maintain its current trajectory by continuing to appeal to its white, conservative base, or to return to its more inclusive roots, those championed by Lincoln – and Lee.

Charles McKinney is director of the African American Studies Program at Rhodes College in Memphis.